Malls Across America

In 1989, Michael Galinsky toured malls across America and snapped pictures. He took those rolls of film and turned them into a slideshow he screened for friends. Now--more than 20 years later--he's uploaded that online. It provides a snapshot of what the industry--and mall culture--looked like at the time.

Galinsky hopes to turn the project into a book. He's uploaded this in part to help raise funds for the project.

I have always thought that images gain much more meaning with time. Looking at the mall slides it's clear that their time has come. Last fall, I took them out, borrowed a scanner and loaded in about 160 of the stronger images. I posted a few on facebook and they got a great response. I started to work on putting together a book.

About 12 years ago, I published a book of rock photos called Scraps. I paired the images with short essays that friends wrote about being in bands, touring, and art in general. I wanted to do the same kind of thing with this book.

About a month ago, while waiting for the writers to write, I noticed some amazing Bruce Davidson subway photos on my brother-in-law's facebook page. They had been linked to a site called How to be a Retronaut. I figured the site would like my mall photos. I figured right. What I didn't realize was how the images would connect. The site didn't bother to tell me that they had posted them, but I found out when other sites began to re-post them. In a couple of days, the photos had been shared on facebook and twitter thousands of times. In fact, they were so popular that they crashed the Retronaut site a few times.

With this campaign, I want to fund the printing of a run of books. Funders can get a book, a print, or a book and a print. I need to pre-sell 500 books to pay for this run.